Business on Facebook: How 6 Retailers are Using Facebook Pages to Increase Sales

Last week, the U.S. experienced the largest “Black Friday” to date, and a record breaking “cyber Monday.” Black Friday and Cyber Monday have become ways to both move product and to establish new clients: retailers know that if you get someone to purchase something during the holiday season you have an excellent shot at repeat business later in the year. While checking off items on our own Christmas list, we did a quick check on some of the major retailers to see how they used Facebook to enhance their marketing efforts. Social Media has been an increasingly important element in their marketing mix and provides a new pool of potential customers.

Listed below are a sampling of retailers with major presence on Facebook, most sharing advertising and content from their website with their Facebook Page.

Amazon: With over 2.000,000 likes, Amazon’s Facebook Page offers a consistent brand look and feel, uses Facebook tools that identify your friends who also like the page, and lists website deals as status updates. This Page is simple in comparison with others; it primarily repurposes content from the primary website. The Page does not offer unique functionality, but redirects to the Amazon main site for support and other information.

Best Buy: 5,300,000 like Best Buy’s Facebook Page, which offers a splashy (if slow to load) landing page and integrates much of their main website technology. You can find store locations based on your profile, enter sweepstakes, watch videos, look for deals, or buy Farmville collectibles. Best Buy used the “invite” function on Facebook to invite their 5 million followers to a midnight opening.

Newegg.com: At 70,000 likes, the Facebook Page shows minimal skin customization, but makes the most of the opportunity to post different types of media information. Offering product review videos, advertised deals, and a “Giveaway” page that provides a daily opportunity to win something, Newegg.com’s Facebook Page is an appealing adjunct to the ecommerce site. Businesses on a budget should take a look; Newegg.com and Woot (see below) have done a great job making full use of the standard Facebook features to build community.

Tigerdirect.com: This company has put a lot of money and effort into attracting their 835,000 likes. This is a slick, customized Page that acts as an extension of their main website. Sweepstakes, deals of the day, coupons, and deal notification provide customers with reasons to join the community; Tigerdirect makes the most of their Facebook audience while they have them with sleek ecommerce integration with their main site.

Walmart: with a focus on “solutions marketing” and all the sophisticated technology money can buy, Walmart earns over 10,000,000 likes. Walmart’s Facebook Page is worth a look for the elegant and strategic job it does to simultaneously build community and sell product. Showcasing technology with wow-factor apps like “Shopycat,” which recommends gifts based on your friends’ likes and activities on Facebook and the “Holiday Joy” app which shows a decorating concept and then allows the user to hover over elements of the picture for pricing and deal information, the site still manages to maintain Walmart’s budget minded and down-to-earth brand image. With friendly-looking moderators leading online discussions about things like “Homemade gifts Under $10” and an app that allows you to purchase and deliver a giftcard on Facebook, Walmart exploits all of the unique Facebook for business functionality.

Woot: 70,000 people like this Page that offers the same quirky copy as their website. Woot uses a very standard Facebook Page to expand their unique brand with nothing more complicated than funny, pithy content. The best thing about the Woot Facebook Page is that they dare to go outside fo their product range and comment on other things of interest to them (like the SETI- that would be “Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence” – project. Which has something to do with something they sell, we’re sure.) We give credit to a company that uses the social media platform to actually be social and create brand personality, while interspersing content from their website.

Whatever your budget is, you can get some benefit from a Facebook Page to build your market or increase sales. E-Retail or brick-and-mortar, the techniques are the same: offer content your audience wants and a unique reason to visit the Facebook Page.

Use the examples of these online Titans for your own business. Spend some time on their social media sites to determine what they are doing and how your business might also benefit by applying the same techniques. With planning and applied efforts, the tools to grow business and retain customers work for a variety of industries.

To learn more about Spalding Barker Strategies, visit our homepage or Contact Us to see how we can help your business.